Agents from Mumbai `helped' Maulana's brother get passport

Agents from Mumbai `helped' Maulana's brother get passport
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 23: Investigations into the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane on Sunday indicated that the three passport agents arrested in Mumbai recently had allegedly "helped" Ibrahim Athar in procuring the passport, official sources said here.

The three arrested by Mumbai police last week had helped Athar, brother of Masood Azhar, the militant released in exchange of the hostages, in completing formalities for the travel documents, according to the sources.

The investigating agencies have so far arrested 10 people including the three and their questioning was being done by various security agencies to nab the Inter Services Intelligence sympathisers in the metropolis, the sources stated.

During the hijacking, intelligence agencies had intercepted a message from the hijackers in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar to one of the four militants here asking them to inform a journalist that if their demands were not met, the aircraft would be blown up.

The modus operandi by the passportagents was to provide the ISI agent with driving licence which was later used as proof of residence for issuance of the travel document, the sources said, adding the three included a Mumbaiite.

Earlier this month, four key accomplices and associates of the hijackers were arrested in Mumbai establishing "neck deep involvement" of Pakistan in the entire episode.

The four arrested activists of Harkat-ul-Ansar terrorist group, based in Rawalpindi in Pakistan, were Mohammad Rehan and Mohammad Iqbal, both Pakistani nationals, Yusuf Nepali a native of Nepal and Abdul Latif, an Indian.

The investigation into the case had been handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation.

This was followed by the arrest of a travel agent and his two employees arrested here for helping the hijackers' associates.